Fireworks - Sightseeing at Night

Fireworks between 1977 and 1982 would release five studio albums and one live recording. After this one, the "band" would break up. From what I've read, Marty McCall was Fireworks. The members of the "band" would come and go, so each album featured a different lineup. Guitarist Jerry Gaston was fairly consistent though, and on Sightseeing at Night co-wrote a number of the songs with Marty.

Marty was a respected singer, and when Michael Omartian produced Christopher Cross' debut, I remember seeing Marty's name on the back cover as a backing vocalist. I knew about Fireworks; I'd just never heard them.

The early '80s was an interesting time for Christian music. The hippie dippy side of the Jesus movement was embracing the business side of the equation, and even the major labels were paying attention, either working out co-distribution deals or releasing albums on their own imprints. For Fireworks, being able to say you were on a major like MCA, even if it was MCA Songbird, was a pretty big deal, and I suspect there was some pressure to deliver a hit.

Now, I'm not sure I spelled it out earlier, but this was my first experience with Fireworks, and frankly I was pretty excited to hear what I'd missed all those years ago. Pulling out the insert with the lyrics and credits, there was also a small brag sheet.

The first thing that greeted my eyes was:

The Band: Fireworks
The Voice: Marty McCall
The Music: Explosive

Okay, the hyperbole runs a little thick, but it's a brag sheet, it's supposed to be a little thick. It got thicker:

Sightseeing at Night is a kaleidoscopic burst of rock 'n' roll that's as commercial as any album I've ever heard on AOR or Top-40 radio. An excellent example of crossing all barriers. — Kip Kirby, Nashville Bureau Chief, Billboard Magazine.

Well, if this didn't get my hopes up nothing would.

Speaking of the band, other than Marty on vocals and Jerry Gaston on guitars, there was Dave Kurfman on bass, and to my surprise Louie Weaver was on drums. From Randy Matthews to Petra, that guy got around.

So with expectations suitably inflated, it was finally time to see if the record could back any of it up.

The album opens with "I Got News for You" and no, it's not a cover of an old Randy Stonehill song. It's an honest-to-goodness riff rock song. This was actually sort of unexpected. The song was pretty solid, but the album soon more or less settled into middle-of-the-road territory rather than the harder-edged AOR of Toto IV, which also came out in '82.

There wasn't anything disagreeable here. It was pleasant, and yes, one could argue there was just enough edge here and there to qualify as AOR. As to being commercial, that's a hard one to comment on because, let's face it, striving to be commercial was almost the other side of the coin from being artistically credible. You were one or the other. You sold out; you were commercial. You stuck to your guns and principles and didn't sell records; you were an artist.

Christian music was an already marginalized sub-genre with its own goofy set of rules and expectations that had to balance ministry, artistry, and trying not to suck (so much suckage, it was a terrible time for good music). I have to give it up though, Fireworks didn't sound terrible. From that perspective they sounded as commercial as anything out there. Funny how not sucking was the equivalent of being commercial.

I was always curious about Fireworks, and I'll be honest, this was better than I expected. But let's be frank—there were no fireworks to speak of, though I'll be giving it a few spins before I put it away.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

Old Enough to Forget

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